Did Iran supply arms to Houthis in Yemen?

Posted by Raphaydeena
on January 20, 2017

Did Iran supply arms to Houthis in Yemen?

The popular rhetoric is that Iran has been supplying weapones to the Houthis, but there has been little evidence of that. The Houthis being the dominant clan of the north were already strongly armed in Saleh’s time, and had rebelled against Saleh a few times in his rule.

When Saleh was ousted in the Arab Spring and so was his son Ahmed Ali Saleh, the commander of the Republican Guard, the control of the army went to Hadi of the South. But most of the top army personnel were from the North and secretly colluded with the Houthis.

Meanwhile in 2014, Saleh, himself a Houthi, also reconciled with the Houthis and through many officers that were still loyal to him, Saleh led the Houthis to large caches of weapons. It was even reported that Saleh planned the Houthi takeover of Sanaa and other northern cities.

Yemen also has a large Black Market of weapons; a UN report earlier this year said that Yemen is awash with 40 to 60 million weapons. Shoulder-held arms are a traditional element of the tribal way of living in Yemen and the black market has made Yemen the most weaponized society of the world.

But according to one Pentagon documents the Defense Department had delivered about $500 million in military hardware to the Yemeni military from 2006 on – when Saleh agreed to be part of the War on Terror. Like Libya,Saleh also fell in the same trap, both were offered weapon for War on Terror, and in both case these weapons were used to prolong civil war.

So all the weapons that the Houthi are using against the Saudi-led War on Yemen are not from Iran but from what US has supplied to Yemen and the small-arms black market which is also mostly controlled by the US (major producers of arms) and their Allies.